Famille Summerbelle

Afternoon creative: Painting birds with a 7 year old

This was a drawing and painting session with my son Lucien.
Little bro Téo fell asleep for his afternoon nap so Lucien and I decided to make the most of this quite time to do some creative stuffs before little tornado woke up.

We set up the paint brushes, paint tubes, chalk and cardboard sheets out on the long kitchen table and started to draw birds. Why not? Lucien came up with the idea while looking out of the window and saw a couple of birds standing on the rooftop.
It wasn't sadly toucan birds...this one he remembered from our trip to Mexico!

How beautiful is Lucien's toucan!


It was a real pleasure to spend an hour or so drawing and painting with Lucien. It's so inspiring to watch him draw and I love his drawing style so much! I think he has a very good eye for proportions and has a firm hand to draw lines.

For the colour palette I was inspired by an image I saw on Pinterest. It was a photo taken by Charles Eames of Alexander Girard's home in Santa Fe.

48h in Paris

It was unplanned. On Friday night Ophelia and I jumped on the Thalys for an express mother/daughter trip to Paris and also to see my friend Fumie from Paumes.


A quick visit to the beautiful Sezane apartment with a white rose, drinks and madeleines as a welcoming gift!


Le Cactus Club with colourful macramés:


We loved our visit to the boutique/gallery Klin D'oeil (6 rue Deguerry, 11ème) to see the exhibition and workshops organised by Japanese artists in collaboration with Paumes in Tokyo. When we arrived on Saturday, a workshop on up-cycling was let by Norito.


Ophelia was very excited to meet the Japanese illustrator Yumi Kitagishi who made a cute illustration of Ophelia and Pipo (OPhelia's cat) on her new book Little Stories of 366 Days edited by Paumes.
How cute are her painted nails!!

Ready for a new school year!

The Summer has gone too fast as always. We had a wonderful time spent with our family in the south of France. The 14 cousins played every day until dark, riding their vintage bikes in the old village. I love Summers in our family house. It's party time with all the siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles and so on. Big tables, lots of good food, wine and laughter :-)

Now we're back in Amsterdam and I have to say I am very happy to get back to work and plan the year ahead.
Téo started his new nursery - in Dutch - Lucien is back to the French school in CE2 and Ophelia is moving to Secondary (how did this happen so quickly?!?). For her no more French at school but Dutch and English. She will be fluent in Dutch in no time! She started her new school this morning, a bit nervous but also very excited about this coming year.
I love how she has organised her desk and decorated her bedroom. Like me she likes to surround herself with lots of pretty colourful things and some fresh flowers...

Illustration from Flow magazine. Wooden spoon painted by Ophelia.

World map notebook by Famille Summerbelle.

Ophelia drawing pretty illustrations on Famille Summerbelle notebook.

The House Boxes for storing all sort of things.

Friends book - Vrienden Boek - a must for the new school year ahead!

Wooden spoon painted by Ophelia.